New York City

Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times
Senator Barack Obama met with former President Bill Clinton in his Harlem office before having lunch together today.

NYTimes: The two men met in Mr. Clinton’s 14th-floor office on 125th Street, with its sweeping southerly view of Central Park, and took a few questions from reporters while posing for pictures. Mr. Clinton said he had agreed to do “a substantial number of things” on behalf of Mr. Obama this fall, and would hit the campaign trail as soon as his Global Initiative conference concluded on Sept. 26.

“We’re putting him to work,” Mr. Obama joked.

Asked for his opinion about the state of the presidential race, Mr. Clinton replied, “I predict that Senator Obama will win and win handily.”

“There you go,” Mr. Obama added. “You can take it from the President of the United States. He knows a little something about politics. There’s nobody smarter in politics, and he’s going to be campaigning for us over the next eight weeks, which I’m thrilled by,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Letterman, who asked about the lunch.

“The race that he ran in ‘92 is — it was similar to what’s taking place now,” Mr. Obama added. “You had an economy that wasn’t working for people, you had a party that had been in power that didn’t seem particularly concerned that it wasn’t working for people, but, you know, he was new. He was young and people were still trying to figure out whether or not the guy was up to the job.”